Obstruction of Justice

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  "Oh! I’m sorry—I didn’t know I was apologizing." Then she heard what she had just said and had the grace to smile. "I’ll try to do better," she said.

  "I might be able to get the hearing put over for a week or even two. I could use some extra time."

  "No, no. Until this is over... Nina, my life is in shambles. And it’s the same for Molly and Jason. We can’t wait."

  "All right. I’ll help you, Sarah. I’ll draft some responsive papers for you to sign. I’d like to get declarations from your son and daughter as well, opposing the exhumation. There isn’t much time."

  "Thank you. Thank you so much." This time her smile was relieved. "Molly gets home from the college about four. If you want to see her, it might be best to come by the house this afternoon after you leave work. We have a place near Regan Beach—400 Dartmouth Way. "

  "I’ll drop by, if I can manage to get a draft put together by then," Nina said. "And Jason?"

  "I can give you his address. Kenny’s phone has been turned off. What about a retainer?"

  "A thousand will get us started, I think. Billed against hours worked, of course."

  Sarah wrote out the check. After she left, Nina, trying to make a picture out of all the colors and pieces Sarah had supplied, noticed the check number, 106. Sarah couldn’t have had this account long. SARAH DE BEERS, read the top, 400 DARTMOUTH WAY. No sign of Ray’s name.

  Sarah was trying to shake Ray de Beers off like a nagging old cough.

  Paul stopped by the Tahoe courthouse to catch Collier Hallowell just before noon. He found him in the law library, sitting at a scratched oak table and whispering to another attorney while other leather-dress-shoe types scribbled at other tables.

  "Excuse the interruption," Paul said, keeping his voice down.

  "No problem, Paul. Meet Jeremy Stamp. Jeremy is—"

  "I know your firm, Mr. Stamp. I’ve been in court with Nina Reilly opposite Jeff Riesner." He pulled up a chair, and shook Stamp’s hand at the same time.

  Stamp had the lean body and calorie-deprived look of a fitness freak. Long-distance runner, Paul thought. He was about five-nine or thereabouts, so he probably didn’t weigh more than one-forty. Paul felt like a rhino sitting next to him.

  The suit, watch, shoes, and haircut all said major money. He had the easy smile of the man who has made it by fifty and only works because he enjoys it. "What a coincidence," Stamp said. "I received a phone call from Ms. Reilly’s office this morning. Will you be working on the de Beers case?"

  "Not that I know of," Paul said. "I’m up here on other business at the moment."

  "Really." Stamp glanced at his watch. Paul had seen that heavy gold I.W.C. model in a catalog that also sold yachts and airplanes. "See you later, Collier. I’m afraid I’ll be unavailable this afternoon. I’m playing golf at the Edgewood course." He rose, waving to Paul. "Don’t you boys work too hard."

  "Ah, get outta here," Collier said. Carrying his briefcase as lightly as an empty file folder, Stamp breezed out the open door.

  "Nina better watch out," Paul observed. "He’s the type with a squadron of eager legal groupies laboring away back at the office. He’ll show up in court fresh and rested after a round of golf."

  "He’s what we all aspire to," Collier said, back up to his shirtsleeved elbows in law books. "Rich, respected, and semiretired."

  "Lunch?" Paul said.

  "Can’t. I have a trial resuming at one-thirty. Judge Milne wants to meet the lawyers in chambers at one to work out a couple of problems. I’m researching those now." He didn’t exactly sound impatient—that wasn’t his style—but there was a zone of high pressure around him.

  "It’s past noon, man. You have to eat."

  "I’ll eat later. Anything to report, Paul? I can spare five minutes." Other patrons of the law library had taken Paul’s side and gone to lunch, leaving behind stacks of books and scraps of paper.

  "I took some samples at the scene. It’s a long shot, but I have Ginger Hirabayashi in Sacramento doing some lab work. I also put an ad in the paper. Reward for information, and so on. Anonymous, of course." Paul gave Hallowell a copy of the ad.

  "I tried that three years ago."

  "Let’s try it again. We have to get the word out. We’re going to have to make our luck in this case."

  "Yeah. You’re right."

  "And I talked to Kim Voss."

  Hallowell looked up. "She’s interesting, isn’t she? Could she add anything?"

  "Hard to say. I’m still working on that. We had dinner last night." Paul warmed to this irresistible topic. "Collier, you remember that scene in The Hustler where Paul Newman is standing with Piper Laurie at her door? She’s wearing a tight skirt and this little cardigan and pearls, and he’s lost everything; he’s finished; he’s got nobody; and he’s with this girl. She’s just met him; she’s a little afraid of him; and suddenly Newman moves in on her and they start kissing. Only he’s so intense, it gets heavier and heavier until you know he’s out of control. You remember that?"

  "Not really," Hallowell said.

  "And she breaks away. She looks at him. Her lips are swollen up and she’s got these smoky eyes, and she says to him— You don’t remember this?"

  "Not ringing a bell yet, Paul."

  "She says in this low voice that you have to strain your ears to hear, ’You’re too hungry.’ Amazing statement, isn’t it? ’You’re too hungry,’ she says. And she runs through her door and locks it from the other side. You hear the latch and Newman’s standing there with this hound-dog face staring at her door, like he’s gonna burn holes through it with his hot eyes, and for a minute there you think he’s gonna break the door down—"

  "I take it you liked Kim," Hallowell said.

  "That’s how it went, no shit. She had to run from me. I haven’t felt that way for a long, long time, buddy."

  "I thought that you and Nina had something going," Hallowell said.

  "Pure Plato from here on out," Paul said. "Nina dumped me. She used the ’friends and colleagues’ speech. She’s got something against me. You should be glad. You’re the lucky fellow she dumped me for."

  "I doubt that," Hallowell said, looking startled.

  "Come on. I know you’ve taken at least one long look hello into those big brown eyes."

  "Let’s not talk about Nina again right this minute, okay, Paul? I’m in trial, and whatever else I’ve got left, I’m putting toward Anna. Remember her? You’re working the case, aren’t you, in addition to your other interests?"

  "Yeah, I’m working."

  "Good. Then I can relax and do the same." Hallowell hunched back over the books and papers on the table in front of him.

  Paul returned to his van, hesitated, and decided to pick up the painting he wanted to buy from Kim, and any other lucky thing that came his way. The Eagle radio station from Sacramento was belting out classic rock from his quadraphonic sound system, the traffic was light, and he was Newman on his way to see a woman.

  Meantime, he would do a little business. Picking up the cell phone with his free hand, he called the lab in Sacramento.

  The long day passed like a dream. Nina talked to people until she was hoarse, zipped over to court for a sentencing hearing, signed things, dictated things, and went to her lunch meeting. Sandy finished typing up the responsive paperwork in the de Beers case just before five, and Nina took it out to the house.

  An area of vacation houses hidden down a long street off Lake Tahoe Boulevard, Regan Beach had only a few large properties, most set at some distance from the lake in sparse woods. The de Beers home, a brand-new three-story edifice with oversize chimneys in the pseudo-Tudor style Nina loved to hate, must have replaced an older structure. From the street all that could be seen was a parking area and heavy foliage.

  A walkway led to the side, where she pushed open an unlocked wooden gate. Fringed by trees, a large expanse of lawn and formal flower gardens speckled with cobbled pathways made up the generous backyard, bordered at the far end by a
white gazebo with a vista of the distant lake. A gardener in a straw cowboy hat was stooping over one of the flower beds.

  Close to the gazebo, Sarah de Beers lay on a white wicker lawn chair shaded from the low late-afternoon sun by a canvas canopy. From all appearances she had been there for quite some time. Her shoes lay kicked aside and forgotten on the soft green tendrils of grass next to the table.

  "Sit down," she said, patting the chair beside her. "Time for a nice cool drink." She sounded too relaxed, and Nina thought again that she was probably medicating herself with something. Well, whether it was booze, tobacco, or caffeine, everybody else in America was doing it too.

  "Thanks, but I have to drive—"

  "Stay long enough to sober up, then." Taking a martini glass from a tray on the table, she asked Nina, "What’s your preference? Seven to one, like publishers prefer their martinis? Or do you like your vermouth the way they say Winston Churchill took it, across the room, to be glanced at briefly?"

  "You’re going to laugh, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a martini," Nina said, giving in to her curiosity. She couldn’t imagine a life where you had an afternoon available to pour gin down your throat, but she had had a difficult day, and the thought held a certain appeal.

  She stretched out on the padded chaise beside Sarah, letting her back de-kink. The afternoon breeze caressed her knees. Lake Tahoe was a twenty-six-mile-long glossy sheet under the blue North Shore mountains right in front of her, but her thoughts were still on the job.

  A client of hers convicted of selling cocaine would be leaving for a stay in the joint in a few days. She had done the best she could for him, preaching about mitigating factors until she was purple in the face, but Milne had listened stonily and given him the middle term of years. A poor hardworking defense lawyer could hardly find a legal technicality to stand on anymore. The loopholes of the seventies were being firmly tied up, one by one, by appellate courts overstocked with ex-prosecutors.

  "Is there any other drink?" Sarah was saying. "Hmm, in your case, we go with classic one-fifth vermouth." She poured vermouth over ice into a silver shaker and added chilled gin, measuring both with the finicky precision of a candy-store owner.

  Nina’s parents had drunk martinis. She remembered her father at the end of the day, offering her a gin-soaked olive. Nobody had drunk martinis for decades, but here they were, popping up again for some obscure reason.

  "The olive is such a mysterious fruit," she said.

  Sarah handed her the glass. "Salud," she said. Nina took a small sip, and then another. Though it tasted like mercury in a thermometer on a freezing day, the drink was industrial-strength, and she liked the wallop. It was exactly what she needed, another vice to substitute for a love life.

  "I’m sorry," Sarah said, "if I seemed pushy in your office. I’m not used to being the one who has to get things done. I don’t have a lot of style at it."

  "You’re apologizing again."

  "So I am. It’s an old habit. I wonder when I’ll stop."

  "When you’re ready."

  "Do you take that thing with you everywhere?" Sarah said, pointing at her briefcase.

  "It’s waterproof, so I can take it into the shower," Nina said almost gaily. "It’s my albatross."

  "What’s in it?"

  "Why, my wallet and cell phone, spare shoes, uh, my laptop computer, a big bottle of ibuprofen, an apple. And a file or two. Pretty boring. Oh, and my copy of Smilla’s Sense of Snow. Got any more from that shaker?" Nina held out her glass, had some more, and said, "Mmm. You know, the fifties weren’t such a bad era after all." Her father used to eat herring when he drank gin, she remembered suddenly, almost able to smell the vinegary fish. Now she could admire the reflections on the distant water, wondering what it would be like to spend her life at this house with this view and that shakerful of moonshine.

  Of course, that picture would have to include drill-sergeant Ray, up until quite recently. This thought brought her back to business. "Is Molly here?" she asked. "I need to show her the draft I put together and get any changes and a signature tonight."

  "She went in," Sarah said. At the mention of Molly, Sarah’s mood had changed swiftly. Now she blurted out, "Molly doesn’t like it when I sit out here like this. She says I’m zoning out. Maybe I’ll be able to stop now. The martinis and the sleeping pills and the Xanax. I’ve been thinking a lot since I saw you this morning. I’m glad he’s dead," she went on, in eerie imitation of Molly at the coroner’s. "I often dreamed of the day when I’d be free of him. I thought if Ray was gone I could fix everything and... but I’m so afraid."

  "Afraid of what?" Nina said. "Ray’s dead."

  "I’m so afraid it’s too late, that we can’t fix it."

  There was a long pause. "It may be too late," Sarah repeated. The way she said the words, they sounded desperate.

  Nina said, "I was shot. In the chest, almost two years ago now. For a long time after that I was afraid of just about everything. The wound was more than just a physical wound, you know? But Sarah, I got over it."

  Sarah didn’t answer. She set her drink on the tray carefully, and folded her arms around her body, as if clasping a familiar despair to herself.

  Noticing, Nina went on. "I wrapped my fear around me like one of those blankets that gave the Native American people smallpox. It was making me sick. I couldn’t do my job, raise my son, live again, until I gave it up."

  Sarah got up, said, "I’ll go get Molly and bring her out." She went into the house.

  Nina watched the lake gulls flying low across the silver water. The sun dipped behind Tallac.

  A scream cut through the air, shrill and high.

  Nina knocked over her chair jumping up. The gardener was ahead of her. She ran after him through the great front door.

  Northwestern lodge decor. A huge stone fireplace. Pine paneling. A thick rug in greens and blues. A long, long staircase...

  "Help me!" she heard. "Help me!" They ran up the staircase and into a bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Heavy curtains covered the windows. In the center of the room Molly was hanging, squirming on a rope attached to the light fixture, her mother frantically trying to bring her down.

  9

  MOLLY SWUNG SILENTLY ON HER ROPE BETWEEN worlds, hovering between life and death, her toes only inches from the floor. Dropping the dull knife with a clang and a cry of frustration, Sarah clawed and jabbed at the rope with her fingernails, her struggles weirdly ineffective as if Molly were turning into a ghost she could not touch. Molly wore an astonished expression, as though she had not expected to suffer. Garbled noises came from her throat as she clutched at the rope around it.

  The gardener pushed Sarah aside, ordering her and Nina to hold Molly up. Nina ran to grab a wildly flailing leg, and took a hard thump to her kidney before she was able, with Sarah’s help, to lift Molly a few inches and take the pressure off her neck. Whipping a pair of clippers out of the tool bag he wore around his waist, the gardener cut the rope hanging from a hook in the ceiling beam that must usually hold the large Boston fern lying spilled on the rug beside them.

  Molly collapsed onto them, causing Nina to stagger and almost fall. They lowered her gently to the floor, where she continued to scrabble at her neck, her movements weaker, her bulging eyes beginning to glaze over. As Nina and Sarah jumped out of the way, in one swift movement the gardener severed the tightened necklace of rope.

  Blue-lipped, gasping and coughing feebly, Molly lay on the floor, her eyes open but dull with shock. Very gently, as gracefully as choreographed dancers who had rehearsed together, the three adults lifted her up in one move, placing her on the bed.

  Sarah bent over her, examining the girl’s neck and listening to her breathing, talking gently to her while Molly sobbed hoarsely, "I’m sorry, Mom."

  Down on her knees now, her arms wrapped around the girl, Sarah said, "It’s all right, baby, it’s all right. We’ll get the doctor." The mother and daughter comforted each other with t
he heat of their bodies, pressing them together as if their closeness could erase the ugly tangle of rope on the floor and the marks coming up around Molly’s neck. Sarah reached over to the tissue box by the bed with one hand, never letting Molly go, and began wiping the snot and tears off Molly’s face.

  Nina saw no sign of pills or drugs or bottles there or in the bathroom. Now certain she could control herself well enough to speak intelligibly, she picked up the phone to call 911, which seemed to have become her favorite number, but Molly saw her from the bed. "Don’t," Molly said. Her voice sounded rolled in gravel. Nina held the phone but didn’t go ahead. She had learned since her 911 call on the mountain that even punching in the first number might bring a callback or even a police car.

  Molly spoke to her mother in a low voice. Nina couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  Sarah said finally, "She won’t go in an ambulance. She doesn’t want a fuss. Call Dr. Lee. He’s the family physician. His number’s downstairs, in the address book on the buffet in the entryway."

  The gardener, who had watched quietly from a few feet away, now spoke up. "She needs to go to a hospital. "

  "I’m just fine now," Molly whispered loudly from the bed, obviously not fine but looking less awful as awareness and color returned to her face. "Mom, make them leave."

  Nina looked around the room. It was far from the ruffled pastel room she might have expected of a girl still in her teens. Although it was upstairs it felt like a basement. The narrow bed with steel rails on which Molly lay, covered with a black sleeping bag, could have come straight on the bus from San Quentin, and the chest in the corner and the computer desk had been painted black. A thin indoor-outdoor rug in dark gray completed the stark postindustrial look.

  But the most depressing thing about the cell Molly had made of her bedroom was the wall of photos torn out of magazines, all of the late rocker Kurt Cobain, a famous young suicide; Cobain smoking a cigarette, riding a skateboard, playing music, mugging for the camera, stringy blond hair hanging over his face to shield his lost and lonely eyes.

  "Please, Nina, Joe, both of you, go downstairs. Call the doctor," Sarah said insistently.